#3d print blender models software#

This will allow you scale each selection individually. Press the period key and switch to individual origins. Check on the cage settings so we can see this in edit mode without the cage. This will increase the resolution of the mesh and help smooth it more. Here click add modifier and select a subdivision surface modifier. Press and hold the Alt key and left click to select this edge here. Press 2 and change selection type to edge selection. Now press E, input 10 and press enter to confirm. Using this selection type we can paint select the faces we need selected. Press 3 to switch the mesh selection type to face. Press Ctrl + A and apply that non-uniform rotation. Press R to rotate, X to rotate around the X axis, input 90 for the amount and press enter to confirm. We need to rotate the sphere and have the top facing forward. This should read 120 in the X, Y and Z dimension fields. Open the item tab on the sidebar and check the dimensions are correct. Press the home key to frame all and bring the sphere into view. In the sphere properties change the radius to 60mm. Press Shift + A and from mesh add a UV sphere. Press A to select everything and press delete. That’s the scene setup and we can now look at modelling. The start clip is how close you can get to an object before the camera clips the view. The end clip is how far away the camera can view an object before its clipped. In the view tab increase the end clip to 10000mm. Open the sidebar with the short cut key N. One setting that needs to be updated because of the changes we made to the scene scale and that is the camera clipping distance. I can press and hold the middle mouse button and rotate around in the viewport.

This will help you achieve very accurate results when modelling. Now back in the scene press G to move, press and hold Ctrl to activate snap, and the cube will snap in increments of 0.1 millimetres. In the snap menu make sure the snap to is set to increment. Entering a value of 0.1 will result in the grid reducing with each millimetre equalling 10 grid divisions. We can increase the number of grid divisions from the overlays tab by reducing this scale. We can see this as the cube is 2mm in length and there are two grid divisions equal to its length. The grid is now divided into blocks measuring 1mm. Back in the scene press Numpad 1 for front view and Numpad 5 for orthographic. It will also display all dimensions in millimetre. This will allow us input dimensions in millimetre. The final setting we can change here is the length setting.

#3d print blender models software#

Also the slicer software used will read the model as millimetre on import. Any model created in the file now will use this new scale. The scene updates to reflect the changes. To set Blender to millimetre you only need to change the unit scale to 0.001. You can always re scale and align the models later but setting things up first can avoid issues in the long run. Another benefit is to match the 3D printing software or service you are exporting to. When working with small scale 3D printed models working in millimetre will be more accurate. Modelling using real world scale is kind of fundamental when yo want to design accurately. Whether you want your 3D models for print, games, architecture or animation. By default Blender begins with the unit system set to metric and the unit scale set to 1. On the left of the scene are the scene properties with an area for units. With all projects its a good idea to have the unit system set up before any modelling is done. I’ll be using a Prusa printer to print the model. In the following post I work through the process of modelling this piggy bank in Blender for printing on a Prusa 3D printer.